Lowe’s Makes Us Feel Small

By consumerist.comApril 12, 2006

A clutch of fixup supplies spilling out our arms, we stumbled into the Lowe’s bathroom fixtures area. We asked for casters of one of the red vested employees, where would we find them? He looked up lazily and, with no small amount of disdain, said, “This is bathroom fixtures.”

We drew our lower lip over our bottom teeth, glanced up and left, took deep breath…

We knew that, we responded, but where in the store are they? The employee looked away from us. Another employee looked over and gave the aisle where the casters could be found. We thanked him and left in that direction.

Yes, a small slight, but we didn’t see the point of lip like that. It’s terribly confusing for us limp-wristed individuals like ourselves to navigate all that hardware. Maybe the aggravation is a minor sensation, like the difference between satin and silk rubbing against each other, but it certainly rubbed us the wrong way.

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On par with my Lowe’s experience last weekend. Wanted to buy a new grill– took a good 10 minutes to track down a salesperson. General incompetence. Will see if said grill actually arrives by the promised end-of-the-week. Do not have high hopes…

…..Sounds typical. You don’t go to Lowe’s asking questions. They, like most big-box stores, have a staff of college-age part-time employees. It’s a cheap parts place, better organized than most. Ignore the help. They once tried to tell me that my old 1930s era 1.25-inch cast-iron plumbing all needed to be replaced with PVC. I’ll bet my plumbing outlives that wastoid…

Had the inside of my house painted, a very professional and expensive job. My wife decided to put new flooring in the down stairs bathroom and laundry room. Went to Lowes for the flooring. The installers showed up, installed the floor on the correct day. After they left I noticed the toilet was plugged in the new floor bathroom, called Lowes to let them know. They contacted the installers stating they would come back in the morning to take care of the problem.

In the mean time I shut off the water to the toilet so nobody would use it. Used the upstairs bathroom to take a shower, little did I know they dropped the old wax ring seal for the toilet down the drain. This plugged the main line all the shower water, toilet, etc. from upstairs came out the toilet and flooded not only the new flooring but my living room, den, dinning room, and bedroom. Thousands of dollars of damage.

Lowes now wants nothing to do with me, since the installers are subcontractors. The store manager won’t even return my phone calls. To say the least, I don’t think I’ll be shopping at Lowes anytime soon.